I recently returned from a very enjoyable and very fruitful week in Paris, combining business with pleasure. I spent time with family, and also enjoyed a series of meetings with my dear friend and colleague, Daniel Dayan. We continued our long-term discussions and debates, moving forward to a more concerted effort, imagining more focused work together. His semiotical approach to power will inform my sociological approach and visa versa, with Roland Barthes, Victor Turner, Hannah Arendt and Erving Goffman as our guides. At least that is one way I am thinking about it now. Or as Daniel put it a while back in an earlier discussion: my politics of small things will combine with his analysis of the politics of even smaller things.

We had three meetings in Paris, a public discussion with his media class at Science Po, an extended working breakfast and lunch at two different Parisian cafés, and a beautiful dinner at his place, good food and talk throughout. I fear I haven’t properly thanked him for his wonderful hospitality.

At Sciences Po, Dayan presented a lecture to his class and I responded. This followed a format of public discussion we first developed in our co-taught course at The New School in 2010. He spoke about his theory of media “monstration,” how the media show, focusing attention of a socially constituted public. He highlighted the social theory behind his, pointing to Axel Honneth on recognition and Nancy Fraser’s critique of Honneth, Michel Foucault on the changing styles of visibility: from spectacle to surveillance, Luc Boltanski on the mediation of distant suffering and especially J. L. Austin on speech acts.

At the center of Dayan’s interest is his metaphor of “the media as the top of the iceberg.” He imagines a society’s life, people showing each other things, as involving a great complexity of human actions and interactions, mostly submerged below the surface of broad public perception, not visible for public view. The media’s role is to go down and bring up, deciding what is important, what is worthy of attention, to show and illuminate. As Austin was interested in the fact that sometimes the mere articulation of speech – “acts,” Dayan is interested in how “media act.” By making some things apparent, and some not, they set the agenda, both forming and informing publics.

A key activity of the media, then, is witnessing, where the media record, translate and illustrate for its public. This is Dayan’s framework, as I understand it, most interesting in the details of its application as it provides a means to consider the relationship between media and power. Daniel draws on Austin here. He makes fine distinctions concerning media expression, applying to the media Austin’s terms: exercitives, verdictives, commissives, expositives and behavitives. As he explains it, this makes sense. But I have a concern, which he and I discussed at length.

Dayan focuses on the relationship between the media and power, making fine distinctions, applying Austin as a way of analyzing forms of expression and showing, but he does not make what I take to be the important distinctions between forms of power. Not only the disciplining power of the truth regime in the fashion of Foucault, and the Weberian notion of coercive power and its legitimation, but also the notion of power that emerges from the capacity of a group of people to speak to each other as equals, reveal their individual qualities through their individual actions and then develop the capacity to act in concert. In his presentation at Science Po, Dayan didn’t present in his framework how the media facilitate political power in the sense of Hannah Arendt. I pointed this out, and we discussed this extensively. We did not disagree; rather, we saw the topic of media and power from different directions, with different perspectives.

I illustrated my point by discussing gay marriage, an issue in the news that day in both France and the United States. In the U.S.: the opening hearings at the Supreme Court concerning two cases, one focused on the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and the other focused on a California referendum on gay marriage was widely reported. In France: at the same time, also widely reported, there was a mass demonstration in Paris against gay marriage, against a likely new law (since enacted) legalizing marriage equality. I noted that from the American court hearings commentators judged that it is highly likely that the official recognition of gay marriage would proceed, pushed by broad popular support, while in France, the legislation yielding the same result was meeting popular resistance. There is an interesting irony here.

Media monstration of actions in the Supreme Court revealed the relationship between official power and the power of concerted action. The popular support for gay marriage was a result of a long media monstrating march, from the Stonewall Riots to the Supreme Court, LGBT rights have been emerging as American commonsense. Gay activists meeting, talking and acting together, seen by their friends and colleagues, but also by many strangers thanks to media presentations, have appeared as normal citizens, worthy of full citizens rights. As Daniel and I might put it, the politics of small things became large, through monstration.

In the meanwhile in France, marriage equality’s road to legalization was more a consequence of big politics. It was part of the Socialist Party Platform, upon which François Hollande ran. Public opinion had not been clearly formed around the issue. More popular was the longstanding traditional commonsense that marriage, and more specifically parenting, should be between a man and a woman, and not between two men or two women. The long road of the politics of small things, shown by the media didn’t exist. While in the U.S. the story was of a conservative Supreme Court trying to keep up with changes in the society, in France official power was ahead of public opinion, at least this is the way it looked at the time of our discussion.

Dayan and I don’t completely agree on marriage equality, and more specifically on the importance of parenting equality. Yet, we both saw in this example (and others we discussed during my visit and our discussions) a platform for dialogue, about the connections among the politics of small things, big politics, monstration, and media and publics.

At our breakfast, lunch and dinner, we explored this. We discussed his ideas about media and hospitality, the analogy between media and museums, my concern that we have to consider not only the media, but also media as a facilitator of all social interaction, monstration as a sphere of gesture (thus our common interest in the sociology of Erving Goffman), the media as a system of monstrative institutions, the relationship between the new (small) media and big media, terrorism as it monstrates, our topic, and Israel – Palestine (a zone of conflict about which we disagree) and “politics as if.”

The politics of the consequential and the inconsequential: people, activities, events and monstrations, the relevance of irrelevance, this fascinates us. We will continue to work on it, and we will report here about our progress, from time to time. I will explain more in my next post.

Marriage season is now upon us, and in year 2012 there are stirrings. Perhaps not in heteronormative quarters, where divorce remains a spectator sport, but unfecund passion is blooming where moral fences and rocky laws abound. Just recently our president, commander-in-chief of the bully pulpit, revealed that he has evolved, no longer uncomfortable with what was once termed, with slight derision, gay marriage, but is now known as “marriage equality.”

Perhaps President Obama was pushed to catch up to his verbose Veep or perhaps he saw this revelation as a strategy to open the promiscuous wallets on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, but he was historic, rhetorically. So much for Barack Hussein Obama as closet Muslim fundamentalist. True, he did not call on states to act on his pronouncement and certainly didn’t call on the Supreme Court to do so, but the occasion was remarkable partly because here as elsewhere Obama was leading from behind. But leading still.

When I teach classes on social movements, I attempt a dangerous feat. I ask students to imagine how not so very long ago – indeed, in my conscious remembrance, a half century back – American citizens could believe that segregation was right and proper. While many other citizens disagreed, the defenders of segregation in 1962 were not wild-eyed, in-bred, or illiterate. They were, some of them, responsible, highly educated, and often compassionate. Most were soon to decide that they were wrong, even if they did not phrase their racial conversion narrative in that way. But in the American South between 1964 and 1972, many former segregationists recognized that they were standing on the “wrong side” of history, or, as Leon Trotsky acidly phrased the matter, in the “dustbin” of history.

Perhaps we need be grateful that contemporary students have so much difficulty in figuring out how a plausible segregationist argument was possible. Today such a policy seems more than wrong; it seems inexplicable.

And perhaps we are at a branching point today – or soon – in that much the same will be said of our current marriage debate. Someday students may puzzle at the very core of the dispute. What was the other side exactly? But this represents the broad, although not immediate, direction of social change. In this President Obama’s change to embrace “gay marriage” does constitute an evolution in his thinking, whereas his previous decision while an Illinois politician to shift away from being supportive of marriage equality constitutes a dramatic flop-flip. When you shift alone with society you deserve credit, even if belated and incomplete. This generous judgment is true for segregationists, who should not be judged perfect, but only better.

Looking forward and not gazing back, there are issues to be resolved. Should this loving arrangement be given the label “marriage” or the lovingly bureaucratic “civil union?” If the latter is the official descriptor, I suspect that the label “marriage” will still become widespread in public discourse. And if marriage is a contractual relationship among citizens, what is the objection to multiple loving, consenting partners. While the social arrangements and legal entanglements are more fraught and complex as one moves from the world of dyads to triads and beyond, the moral justification is powerful, even if few will take advantage of such complexities.

As the supporters of marriage equality have emphasized, compelling claims against it are lacking. Except for one. This is the assertion of “custom and tradition.” Social arrangements are sticky things. However, it is precisely this argument that was used to support state-enforced racial separation. While one should not dismiss the stabilizing principle of custom and tradition – too much change too rapidly is disorienting – custom and tradition are not an argument, but only a mantra.

Ultimately supporters of marriage equality will triumph, but, if done right, it will take time for many citizens to get used to the idea. An immediate fiat is almost as dangerous as no change at all. One can plausibly argue that our forty-year scuffle over legal abortion has precisely this root. One day laws prohibiting abortion were in place and the next they had vanished, permitting no slow evolutionary slide. Those who argue that change can’t come soon enough are often as wrong as those who suggest that change must never arrive.

But change will arrive – it is arriving – in popular culture, in literature, in journalism, in education, and in politics. And some day, perhaps before I retire, students will struggle when I ask them to imagine a day in which marriage could not be between any loving people. Or at least between those who claimed love at the moment of justifying their relationship to the State.

Last week’s posts all address the difficult issue of the relationship between public appearance and private beliefs and actions.

Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, Gays and Lesbians are unlikely to become President, Michael Corey reports. Large percentages of Americans would be unlikely to vote for these minorities for the highest office in the land according to a recent Gallop poll. This contrasts with other groups that have historically been objects of intolerance. Only small percentages of the population reveal an unwillingness to vote for a Hispanic, Jew, Baptist, Catholics, woman or African American. Given the definitive role that racism has played in American history, it is striking that of these historically excluded groups, the least amount of prejudice is directed toward African Americans. This represents significant progress. That Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, gays and lesbians don’t fare so well shows that progress is a slow and uneven process. To be sure, even in the case of African Americans and women, the taboo against the expression of prejudice may depress the numbers, as Felipe and Andrew maintained in their replies. There is private prejudice, public denial.

Corey proposes two special reasons for the persistence of prejudice against Mormons, true belief, i.e. ideological certainty, and “know-nothingism,” i.e.  intentional ignorance. Michael Weinman explores how these are produced and reproduced in Israel, not only as a matter of official public policy, but more significantly in the naming of a picture book character, Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. The project of official policy to Hebraize the names in East Jerusalem is transparent. Every day practices and expectations about in group and out group relations are more fundamental than the official project of exclusion, resulting in more durable effects. The public project to disappear Arab Jerusalem is strongly supported by the intimate working of primary socialization, turning a difficult political conflict into an impossible one.

The passage of the marriage equality law in New York is a milestone. Changes in everyday practices preceded the event. With gays and lesbians in their diversity more visible, their exclusion from marriage (and the military) became harder to sustain. The way we lived suggested one legal framework. The way we live mandated another. The official public is catching up with private everyday practices.

And as the legal framework changes, so do everyday practice: thus, Americans have become accustomed to have access to public support of medical care in their old age. Even conservative Republicans, who initially denounced Medicare as the beginning of the end of freedom in America, now must maintain their support, as they are proposing fundamental changes to the program, which Democrats see as a dismantling. With this in mind, Gary Alan Fine expects such Republican support of Obamacare, in the long run.

President Obama is a reluctant supporter of gay marriage. While he applauded the passing of the New York law last week, he carefully didn’t openly endorse change in Federal policy. Republicans say they support Medicare, while they propose policies that may dismantle it. Even the casual observer can read between the lines. Obama’s opposition to gay marriage is insincere, as is Republican support of Medicare. Americans, further, may indeed be more prejudiced against blacks, less prejudiced against Mormons than the Gallop poll indicates. Personal conviction may contrast with public appearance and expression.

But note how important appearance and expression are. If a person is afraid to utter openly racist conviction, it is less likely that the person will be willing to engage in overt racist action. The hypocrisy constitutes a social control. When Obama publicly supports gay marriage, it will be a big deal (my guess before the next elections). It will help extend the normality of equality for those with various sexual orientations. While Republican direct attack on Medicare is unlikely (no matter how they feel about it), when they stop attacking Obama’s healthcare reform and start suggesting ways to improve it (perhaps still wanting to undermine Obamacare) it will also be a big deal. How one is hypocritical matters.

But please only two cheers. Sometimes hypocrisy deserves its bad reputation, as in the Strauss-Kahn affair. Charged with rape in New York, DSK is likely to get off here. He appears to be innocent, though he may not be, but in such a case appearance is enough. As we discussed in the replies to my report on Daniel Dayan’s reaction to the affair, Strauss-Kahn may even have a significant political life in France. Yet,  a can of worms was opened, and despite some valiant attempts to get those damn worms back in by the likes of Bernard-Henri Lévy, there are still important questions that arise from the case concerning the relationship between public appearance and private belief and actions. Lévy pretends that the private actions of Strauss-Kahn are not at issue and that the biggest scandal has been his  public humiliation. Yet, it is clear to me that the private life of public men sometimes should be examined. DSK stands accused of rape in another case, in France this time, not by a lowly chambermaid, but by a member of the French cultural-political elite. An official public appearance of innocence may or may not be supported by private witness. This is and should be a public issue. The public prerogatives of power should be subjected to critical examination. I hope they are not hidden by a resurgence of anti-Americanism in France, as has been reported by The New York Times. No cheers for xenophobia and chauvinism. Only two for hypocrisy. Because sometimes, it should be revealed, with consequences.

This week I am proud to be a New Yorker. Our governor and our state legislature, which have not been a source of pride in recent years, distinguished themselves in noteworthy ways.

There was the normal stuff. A timely budget and new ethics law passed without much drama. And there was the extraordinary, a fundamental human rights advance. Marriage is no longer a heterosexual privilege in my home state.

I should add that there are many problems with Governors Cuomo’s approach to our economic problems, in my opinion: too easy on the wealthy, too hard on the poor and public employees. I hope that now that he has established himself as fiscally responsible, he will turn next year to more directly addressing the suffering of working people and the poor. I am not a fan of the economically conservative, socially liberal blend.

In fact, the establishment of the new marriage contract right has both advantages and disadvantages for specific gay couples, as was observed by Katherine M. Franke in a New York Times op. ed. piece. There is less openness about the inclusion of partners in insurance coverage, more restrictions. The marriage option should not become a marriage compulsion. And I am also not sure how progressive this development is. It is noteworthy that the advance of gay marriage ties people to a traditional state sanctioned relationship, something which wise conservatives have noted (including Gary Alan Fine in a private exchange we had). Gays in the military and gay marriage, seen in this light, are important conservative advances. No wonder former Vice President Cheney is a supporter of gay marriage.

Yet, marriage equality is something that is truly significant, going well beyond the details of the marriage contract and political ideology. It formalizes a fundamental advance in human rights and dignity. Another opinion piece in the Times gets at the true significance of the moment, Frank Bruni’s “To Know Us Is to Let Us Love.” He underscores how spectacular the advance is in comparison to what he had hoped for as a young gay man coming of age in the 80s, and he makes the point that once people know homosexual love, they approve. After citing the examples of some leading public figures, he tells the story of his 76 year old Republican father:

“Years ago he would quietly leave the room whenever my sexual orientation came up in a family conversation. But when he urged me to attend a Halloween party he gave for his friends last fall, he insisted I bring Tom, whom he has come to know well over the two and a half years we’ve been together. And as he introduced us to his golf partners from the country club, he said, ‘This is my son, Frank. And this is my other son, Tom. Or at least I think of him that way.’”

And then Bruni asked his father the telling question:

“‘Do you support gay marriage? I asked him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, explaining that it still seemed strange. He added: ‘But not if you know the person.’ ‘Meaning me?’ I said. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean Tom. He’s a good person. If you and he got married? I guess that would be O.K. Yeah, that would be fine.’”

The first time I read this passage, I confess, I teared up. This is true recognition of the other, and a great advance in that it is increasingly becoming the norm. The recognition is more important than the contract. The contract seals the human ideal.

There was a long cultural march leading to this victory, with more legal challenges to go. But I think it is worth noting the march as it appeared in everyday life. Hannah Arendt tells us that political power is constituted when people meet each other as equals in their differences as distinct human beings, and they speak and act in each other’s presence and they develop the capacity to act in concert.  It is the power of Tom, Frank and his father that led to the advance this week in New York, and I believe it is the continued development of this power that will extend gay rights and dignity in the coming years.

Before closing, I must pay tribute to an old friend, Joe Borgovini, who died of aids in the early 90s. We lost touch, but through the web and a Google search a few years ago, I discovered the sad news which I very much feared. We were college apartment mates. I vividly remember the day he told my then girl friend, Naomi, and me that he is gay. I think it must have been in the late winter or early spring of 1970. Coming out was just becoming a significant form of activism. We were truly shocked. Joe had another life about which we knew nothing. He, for the first time, openly told us about himself. Our friendship deepened.

There hadn’t been any open discussion about sexual orientation in our social circles, which means that such discussion was rare indeed, since we were all New Left activists, very much at the forefront of progressive politics. It now seems remarkable how limited we were. We were often demonstrating for social justice and the environment, against racism, against the war. “Gay Liberation” was a very new thing. And after our first discussion, a world that had been hidden became visible. A world, not only  individuals, came out. We talked with our friend and we proudly marched in the first Gay Pride Parade in Albany, New York, with him, along with his friends. I wish we could celebrate with him today.